The United States today is a land of stark and bewildering contradictions.
The greatest industrial and agricultural power in history cannot feed, clothe and provide a decent livelihood for millions in this country. Countless others work away their lives to survive, while billionaires squander fortunes on mansions and fly around the world in private jets. Poverty and economic insecurity exist alongside extravagance.
Vicious racism and the repressive power of the police, FBI and CIA mock the promises of liberty, justice and equality. Washington politicians say they want international cooperation and peace, but they continue to build one of the mightiest military machines on earth. The U.S., itself capable of extinguishing life on the planet, is on the verge of nuclear self-destruction with the Soviet Union.
We see churches in every neighborhood and endlessly hear about the sanctity of the family and morality. Yet the country suffers a horrible moral and social decay. Violence against women and their sexual exploitation are unmatched on earth. Movies and television are very sophisticated technically, but offer not much more than romance and escapism. Their stories dwell on violence, despair and degradation, and advocate that life’s aim should be narrow self-gratification. Real life, in contrast, cries out for work for the welfare of humanity.
What is the reason for these contradictions between the promises, the potential of this society, and its stark reality? Why is there such an agonizing gap between what is and what could be!
The answers to these questions cannot be found in cynical condemnations of “human nature” or apologies about the “way things are.” No! Monopoly capitalism, the social system under which we live, is responsible for the contradictions of U.S. society.
A system of exploitation, violence, racism and war strangles our lives. Monopoly capitalism thrives on the private control of society’s wealth and production – production involving the interconnected efforts of millions of working people.
The super-rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by dominating the economics, politics, and cultural life of the country. The monopolists will throw workers out into the streets to starve, promote violent racism, and build a military arsenal that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits!
This is an irrational and unjust system. But life does not have to be this way.
We can improve our lives and society, and ultimately we can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the monopoly capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern; where the everyday working people become the rightful masters of society.
Such an economic and political transformation will be radical, but a radical solution is what it will take to bury the miseries of capitalism. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organize to struggle and, one day, win socialism.
Gone are the days of competitive capitalism, of society dominated by independent farmers and merchants. The rise of monopolies at the end of the 19th century ended that era. Today we must look ahead to the future where socialism, as a more advanced social system, will be built on the powerful productive capacities now stifled by capitalism. Socialism will replace monopoly capitalism, just as capitalism replaced feudalism.
At one time American capitalism was a vigorous and relatively progressive system. The revolution of 1776 set back European colonialism, and the young republic inspired many people struggling against oppressive monarchies in Europe. From its very beginnings, however, America was a land of contradictions. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” applied originally to just a small group of wealthy, white, land-owning males. The “pursuit of happiness” meant the right to accumulate property and wealth. Under this flag, millions of Native American Indian peoples were slaughtered and their lands stolen. Tens of millions of Africans perished in transit to America, and those that survived lived as human chattle. Early American society, both North and South, was based upon the barbarous enslavement of African peoples.
Later when the U.S. seized the great Southwest, Chicanos became a conquered people in their own lands. Asians were imported as coolies and contract laborers to help build the West. The U.S. colonized Puerto Rico, the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippines and other lands in the Pacific.
From Europe tens of millions of people seeking a new and better life made their way to these shores. But most found themselves cruelly exploited as indentured servants, craftsmen, laborers and small farmers. Inequality and organized cruelty abounded in the new society – nothing less than a second revolution, the Civil War, was needed to end slavery. Women, half the population, could not even vote until 1920.
U.S. capitalism also spread its tentacles throughout the entire world. The U.S. coveted the markets, raw materials, and labor of other peoples, especially in the third world. It invaded the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, the Congo, Iran, Lebanon, China and a host of other countries. It waged wars of conquest like the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Korean War, and the war in Indochina. Through this aggression, U.S. industrialists and financiers constructed a world empire of colonialism and exploitation.
After World War II the U.S. became a superpower and dominated the world. U.S. monopolies ripped off billions in superprofits and earned the justified hatred of people around the globe. At home the U.S. ruling class used these superprofits to dull class and other social contradictions. The monopolists hoped they could continue their bloody deeds forever.
Socialism, by fundamentally changing the social system of the U.S., will end this criminal situation. Socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of the working and oppressed peoples of the U.S.
The creativity and toil of the working people – workers, farmers, technicians, craftspeople, intellectuals and others, here and in other countries – built the U.S. Whenever the working and oppressed peoples tried to improve their position in society, however, the ruling forces viciously attacked and opposed them.
The people’s movement in the U.S. is stained with the blood of hundreds of martyrs, including many socialists and communists. The Haymarket demonstrators of Chicago. The Pullman strikers. The massacred men, women and children of Ludlow, Colorado. The fighters of the union organizing drives of the 1930s. The farm workers of today. These are a few of the famous heroes and heroines of the U.S. working class. The state persecuted and even killed fighters for justice, from John Brown to Nat Turner, from Eugene Debs to Mother Jones, from W.E.B. DuBois to Malcolm X, from Big Bill Haywood to Juan Cortina.
But the struggles of the working class and people in the U.S. could never be fully extinguished because the injustices remained. Fighters for the people continue to come forth. In the 1960s, these contradictions reached a turning point. In Indochina and around the world, people challenged the domination of U.S. imperialism. Domestically, the struggle of the Afro-American people, and oppressed nationality people generally, shook the foundations of U.S. society. Many others, such as students, women, and growing numbers of workers, began to reject U.S. monopoly capitalism and demand a just society, one without exploitation, racism and discrimination.
From those days of civil rights marches, militant demonstrations and anti-war protests, other voices of progress spoke up throughout the land. People cried out against pollution and environmental destruction; the grave dangers of nuclear power; the rapidly declining standard of living and the quality of life in the cities; and cultural decay.
Today we find ourselves living under a system that is in irreversible decline. Each person in America is faced with the choice of either enduring the suffering of unemployment, inflation, brutalization and war; or taking the path of struggle – joining with the millions of others who are dissatisfied and know that a better society is possible. Women and men, young and old, and people of all nationalities are realizing we must unite and struggle to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human beings.
If the working people, and not the monopolies, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives. We could have full employment and safe places of work. We could end industrial pollution and chemical dangers, and guarantee a decent standard of living for all. We could have a government that could wipe out racism and groups like the KKK and Nazis. We could have a society which lays the basis for the equality of nationalities. The status of women could be advanced qualitatively and the foundation established for complete emancipation. And we could live in a society that is not preparing constantly for war and self-extinction. These are the promises that encourage us forward.
These are the hopes and dreams of socialism in the U.S. This document is dedicated to realizing that day when the exploiters, racists and warmongers will be thrown from power forever, and a new life for the people of the U.S. can begin. The common woman and man will bring about this historic transformation, and with that act, step onto the stage of history as the rulers of a new age.